Using an expensive education to ramble about Economics, Politics and English Beer

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Obama

I don't mean to steal Peter's thunder, as he's been providing us with some handy summaries on where the candidates for President in 08 sit on various foreign policy issues, but I thought I'd jump the gun and tell you that I found this bit from Barack Obama's big foreign policy speech last Monday to be right on the money:

In 2002, I stated my opposition to the war in Iraq, not only because it was an unnecessary diversion from the struggle against the terrorists who attacked us on September 11th, but also because it was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the threats that 9/11 brought to light. I believed then, and believe now, that it was based on old ideologies and outdated strategies – a determination to fight a 21st century struggle with a 20th century mindset.

As Matt notes, the contrast between this and what John Edward's emphasized in his "I was wrong about Iraq" mea culpa back in 2005 is striking:

Almost three years ago we went into Iraq to remove what we were told -- and what many of us believed and argued -- was a threat to America. But in fact we now know that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction when our forces invaded Iraq in 2003. The intelligence was deeply flawed and, in some cases, manipulated to fit a political agenda.

I realize that Hilary and Edwards are in some sense unable to take the Obama line on this given their gung-ho support for the war back in that fateful fall of '02, but in Obama I'm beginning to see the potential for a substantively compelling foreign policy vision that actually attacks the underlying premises of the neocon worldview rather than simply focusing on the tired - albiet in many ways legitimate - "Bush manipulated the intelligence" theme.